Revisions—Zen for Film

The artist Nam June Paik’s Zen for Film is a blank piece of film that plays for several minutes. It projects the dust it has collected over time, so each viewing is unique from those past.

In designing a “digital interactive” that would supplement Bard Graduate Center’s Fall 2015 re-exhibition of this work, we wanted our own work to be constantly evolving in a similar way. When a user taps the screen, her tap leaves behind a “dead pixel” colored R, G, or B. The screen shows an accumulation of taps from the past week.

Users can explore themes such as Boredom, Chance, Materiality, Nothingness, Silence, Time, and Trace, each of which pop-up in a “blue screen of death” motif. Works slide slowly across the horizon. Dead pixels pile up.

Our interactive was made specifically for a 1920 × 1080 pixel display. Please keep this is mind while viewing the web version (as it is not tablet or mobile compatible).

The exhibition was developed by curator Hanna Hölling during a two-year Andrew W. Mellon “Cultures of Conservation” Fellowship. The digital interactive includes contributions by Bard Graduate Center master’s students.